This short is wonderfully ambitious with its storytelling. The underlying intent: “The larger our past gets the smaller our present feels” is given a world to live in. The animation invites you in with layers of textures and ideas.

At the height of the Great Depression, the showman of a renowned circus leads his troupe through the devastated American landscape, lifting the spirits of audiences along the way. During their travels they discover, Will, a man without limbs who lives out his life in a sordid carnival sideshow, far below his aspirations of the grandeur of the great circuses. Having only known a life of limitation and discouragement, Will is struck by an intriguing encounter with the showman that leaves him with a drive to hope against everything he has ever believed.

Winner of the Doorpost Film Project, this short film by Joshua Weigel will be expanded into a feature length film.